Avengers link mere plot to kill Jonathan, say kinsmen

Those linking former President Goodluck Jonathan to the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) are gunning for his head, Niger Delta stakeholders alleged yesterday.

The stakeholders under the aegis of the Coalition of Niger Deltans for Justice and Development (CONDJUD) described the allegation that Jonathan is the grand patron of NDA as callous, wicked and unthinkable.

“It is a plot to bring him to disrepute and eventually kill him”, CONDJUD National President Chief Ebiakpor Barley claimed in Yenagoa, the Bayelsa State capital.

NDA, also yesterday, renewed its campaign for Niger Delta Republic, fixing October 1 for the venture.

CONDJUD also frowned at the security report alleging Jonathan’s involvement with NDA, saying it was “contrived by hired blackmailers for selfish, personal and wicked reasons.”

Barley said despite the smear campaign, Jonathan remained a good, innocent, peace-loving, law-abiding and God-fearing man.

He said: “Laughable as the allegations against him (Jonathan) in the campaign of calumny already in the open are, it cannot be taken for granted and waved aside as it is serious because they are desperate and anxious to accomplish their clandestine mission to malign, frame up and eliminate an innocent man.

“The plot is to link and to establish him as the chief sponsor of the activities of a militant group in the Niger Delta – the Niger Delta Avengers. The ex-President, we all know, is a meek and honest man, who upholds more than anything else, the unity of Nigeria and progress of her people for greater development.

“Therefore, any kind of thinking to link him with any set of persons or cabal planning or carrying out bloody mission of bombing and destroying the economic means of the country or destabilising the nation, cannot and does not tally with his character.”

Jonathan, Barley said, demonstrated his belief in non-violence and the development of the country when he vowed that “no blood of any Nigerian is worth my ambition”.

He said Jonathan voluntarily relinquished power to his successor, President Muhammadu Buhari, without allowing his followers to foment trouble during and after the 2015 presidential election.

The CONDJUD leader said: “That Jonathan is sponsor of the NDA is laughable and a fabricated lie from the pit of hell and the handiwork of mischief makers and persons who are indeed enemies of Nigeria and want this country to capitulate under the watch of Buhari.

“They are the same people who collaborated with other parts of the world to predict doom for Nigeria in 2015 and that the presidential election of that year will be the point of disintegration for Nigeria and Nigerians.”

He said the mischief-makers, dissatisfied and angry at the failure of their prediction, were once again out to promote disunity, destabilisation, disintegration and liquidation of the country by plotting a collision course between Jonathan and Buhari.

Barley alleged that some of the mischief-makers were politicians within the All Progressives Congress (APC) seeking Buhari’s favour.

He also accused some traditional neighbours and sworn ethnic enemies of the Ijaw in the Niger Delta and their feudal Northern allies as the engineers of the allegations against Jonathan.

According to him, some heads of security agencies as well as overzealous anti-graft agencies, anxious to impress Buhari to justify the hundreds of millions of naira voted for them, were also suspects in the unfounded allegation.